Down Home Blues in a Historic Juke Joint

The Down Home Blues Club in Rentiesville, Oklahoma isn’t some slick blues-themed joint with neon guitars screwed to the wall, it’s the real dirt-under-the-fingernails deal. The building began life in 1936 as D.C. Minner’s grandmother Lura Pearson’s Cozy Corner, then D.C. and Selby Minner came home after years on the road and reopened it as the Down Home Blues Club in 1988. This is juke-joint blues with history baked into the walls, a place where musicians don’t just play the blues, they pass it around the room. D.C., who had worked with heavyweights including Freddie King, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Lowell Fulson, didn’t want to farm the family land, so instead of planting crops, he built stages. That turned out pretty well. The club became home base for the Dusk ’Til Dawn Blues Festival, launched in 1991 and now Oklahoma’s longest-running blues festival, while the property also houses the Oklahoma Blues Hall of Fame. Sunday jam sessions keep the tradition breathing year-round. In Rentiesville, one of Oklahoma’s historic Black towns, the Down Home Blues Club isn’t trying to recreate an old-school blues joint. It never stopped being one.